The Sin Eater(9)

Inside the bureau were several pigeonholes, some containing yellowing notepaper with the Holly Lodge address, others with envelopes and books of old stamps whose value was a penny and twopence. There was also an old inkstand and a small blotter, but that seemed to be all. Benedict, who had been half-expecting to find locked-away secrets, was disappointed, but as he was about to close the bureau, he saw several sheets of newspaper folded at the back. Probably they were only makeshift drawer-liners, but he might as well glance at them.

They were not drawer-liners. They were cuttings from some long-ago newspaper or magazine, and the dates were the late 1890s. Declan’s era, thought Benedict, reaching for them. He unfolded the first and saw that the headline referred to a cause célèbre in the late 1890s – a series of killings which had apparently been known as the Mesmer Murders.

This sounded interesting, and Benedict thought he would read it while he ate his lunch. The articles would not have any connection with Declan, but they might be useful for the criminology essay. And the name bestowed on the killer was unusual enough to warrant a further look. He retrieved his sandwiches from his jacket, and returned to the bureau.

There had been, it seemed, five victims of the Mesmer Murderer – three men and two women. One of the women’s bodies had been found in her own house, but the others had been found in Canning Town, near the river, close to an old sewer outlet. One theory was that the killer had intended to dispose of those victims in the river but had been interrupted. The newspaper would not distress its readers with the details, but the killings had been violent.

Benedict thought Canning Town was a part of London’s docklands that had not been much developed yet. Bodies in Victorian docklands did not, on the face of it, seem to form much of a base for an essay, never mind a doctoral thesis, but somebody in this house had thought it worth keeping these. He reached for another sandwich and unfolded the next cutting, which focused more on the victims than on the police investigations. Benedict took a large bite of his sandwich and read on.

A curious fact linked the victims. Immediately before their deaths they had all referred to an appointment that must be kept – an appointment about which they refused to disclose information. ‘He cancelled everything to keep the appointment,’ said the sister of one victim. ‘Even an important church meeting that had been arranged for months.’

All the victims, without exception, had marked on their calendars or diaries the date on which they had met their death.

‘And very elaborately marked, as well,’ said the sister. ‘Red ink and curly scrolls. Entirely out of character. A plain note in his diary was what he’d make if he had a business appointment at his work, not something a child might draw on a calendar for its birth date.’

The paper’s editor had added a note at this point, to say that the business concern in question was a small printing firm in Islington, of which the man had been general manager.

A female victim, described as an actress and artists’ model, had apparently told a female friend that she had an engagement which she thought might bring her a good sum of money.

‘That’s all she would say,’ the friend was quoted as saying. ‘But she was in a kind of dream about it – like those people you see being mesmerized in the music halls. Afterwards I found her diary, and she had drawn a picture round the date and the time, as if she thought it was going to be a really important day for her.’

The wife of a third victim described the calendar markings in more detail. ‘Every single calendar and diary in the house was marked,’ she said. ‘It sounds a bit fanciful, but my brother plays chess, and the outline my husband drew on the calendars looked exactly like a chess piece.’

A chess piece. Benedict stared at the page, his sandwich forgotten. That’s what I saw that day, he thought. That was the outline on the calendar and the desk diary in this house all those years ago. One of my parents – or my grandfather – sketched the outline of a chess piece on that date on the calendar. Only I didn’t recognize it then.

There was not much point in searching the house for the calendar and the desk diary, but Benedict did not need to. He could still see them clearly. A chess piece – perhaps a pawn – drawn around the date in red ink. And a smaller, similar, sketch around the time of three p.m.

Just over a hundred years ago, five people had been hell-bent on keeping a mysterious appointment on that date and at that time. They had drawn the outline of a chess piece on their calendars. All five had died. Twelve years ago, Benedict’s parents and his grandfather had done the same thing and they had died as well.

But the people in the 1890s were murdered, he thought. My parents weren’t murdered.

‘Weren’t they, Benedict? Can you be sure of that? A driver can be forced to swerve on an icy road because he thinks he’s seen someone standing in the road . . . Someone who never came forward to give evidence and who was never traced . . .’

The words came raggedly, as if time had frayed them, but it was Declan’s voice, soft and with that recognizable Irish lilt. Benedict frowned and tried to push it away. This was sheer nerves, nothing more; it was purely because this house had such bad memories for him. Declan no longer existed; he had been dead for more than fifty years.

But these newspapers existed, and the facts in them were real. He continued reading. The article, having finished reporting on the victims’ families, next seized on the remark about mesmerism, and told its readers that one theory suggested the killer had made use of this contentious practice; that he could have somehow planted in each victim’s mind the command to be at a specific place on a specific date. This did not give a motive, but when did a madman need a motive?